Vegan Basics

Sweet Roasted Garlic

Roasting garlic gives my favorite herb a sweet smooth taste... I put Sweet Roasted Garlic Spread on sliced french baguette slices to create small finger sandwiches, on pizza dough as a base before other ingredients, a scoop tossed in drained pasta, or for any vegetable that needs a kick. And salad dressings, ooh, la, la!

Roasting garlic will STINK UP the entire house. So be prepared! In the winter time when the house is closed up, it can burn your eyes slightly. Just think of it as a medicinal therapy treatment. After completing the creation, I make sure that all the cuttings and shells are taken to the trash dumpster. Then I light my favorite A.I. Root French Vanilla Candles and the whole house smells good again.

Preheat oven to 375°

Ingredients

17 whole garlic bulbs
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 3/4 cup olive oil

Tools

cookie sheet or Pyrex dish
small bowl
wide aluminum foil
food processor
spatula
2 clean empty storage jars

Preparation

Baking Preparation

I buy a large bag of garlic at Costco for about $2.50.

Open the bag and twist the loose skins off of 17 heads.

Line the 17 garlic heads up on the cookie sheet to determine the amount of foil you need to cut... pull out enough foil for them to sit on and still have enough left over to fold over and pinch the edges closed before baking.

Garlic Preparation

Cut

Cut a straight flat thin slice off the very top edge of each head and arrange on the foil lined cookie sheet with the cut edges exposed.

Olive Oil & Salt

Using 1/4 cup of olive oil, drizzle each garlic head with a portion of the olive oil...
           
Scatter the sea salt over the garlic and seal them up by making a foil pouch.

Bake

Place in the preheated oven and cook for 1 1/2 hours at 375. Cook this in a conventional oven and NOT CONVECTION... the exposed cloves will turn a golden brown and will be soft when pierced with a knife.

Extraction

Once the garlic heads have cooled, take each head and squeeze the soft golden garlic from the shell. Remove any skins that may fall into the garlic during the extraction.

Extraction HINT

If you are in a hurry and can't wait for the garlic heads to cool down, put on your plastic kitchen gloves to protect your hands from the heat.

Season & Store

All the soft garlic extractions can now be put into a food processor with 1 teaspoon sea salt and pulse.

         
Turn the food processor on and slowly drizzle 1 1/2 cups extra virgin olive oil into the mixture. If done slowly, the entire mixture should resemble dark mayonnaise.

For those trying to limit fat calories, use 1 cup olive oil or less... the mixture will be thicker and have less volume, but the taste will be the same!

You can see from my photographs that by the time I bottled the garlic spread, it began to separate... this was due to the heat and the time between pulsing, photos and bottling. If this happens, don't worry because once the bottles are refrigerated, the olive oil will solidify. Simply take the cold jars and use a long table knife and stir the &contents to re-distribute the garlic evenly throughout the oil.

This garlic mixture stays fresh for 2 months... but it probably won't last that long!